A Beating Heart
by adriaticjellyfishsting
Summary: When Korra asks Mako if he would seek revenge on the man who murdered his parents, he remembers their deaths and how he found their killer five years later.


**disclaimer: I own nothing, only a computer. **

**A Beating Heart**

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Mako tucks the blanket in around Korra, who is sound asleep, and kisses her bare shoulder just before covering it up with the sheets. He's leaving to go back to his own room, so that Tenzin doesn't find him in her bed in the morning, and he doesn't want Korra to wake up cold as well as alone. He sits on the edge of the bed, pulling his shirt over his head.

There's a low grumbling sound from behind him, and he can feel Korra turning over.

"Mako?" she mumbles into her pillow, "Where are you going?"

He turns around and bends over so that his face is next to hers.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, "I thought you were asleep."

"I was."

"Shh, just go back to sleep," he says, and strokes her head lightly.

"Stay," she says, reaching her hand out from under the blankets to grab his wrist, "Tenzin's not going to find you. And besides, you're a big boy. You can handle him. I think."

Mako sighs, and crawls back into bed. He lays on his back, and stares up at the ceiling as Korra wraps herself around him. It feels good, better than he will ever admit to anyone, to have someone hold him at night, to be warm and loved. To be cared for. He can feel the rise and fall of her chest with every breath, and wishes that he had taken his shirt back off so he could feel her warm skin against his. He's drowsy, slipping away from consciousness and into dreams, all wrapped up in her arms.

"Mako?" Korra asks.

"Hmm?"

"If you could find the man who killed your parents, would you?"

He's suddenly wide awake.

"Why do you ask?"

"It's nothing," she says, "I just had a dream earlier, that someone hurt someone that I loved, and that I found them and I killed them. I just wondered if you would do the same."

"Oh," he says.

Mako remembers with clarity being eight years old and walking home with his parents on a cloudy summer night, the threat of a storm hanging heavy in the air. He can remember the exact square of pavement they were standing on, only three blocks from their home, three blocks from Bolin and the warm safety of his bed. He can't remember where the attack came from, just that one moment his mother was holding his hand, and the next she was sprawled on the ground, burning and bleeding, shouting at his father to take him and run.

He remembers the flames that devoured his father's face, chewing away the flesh, and he remembers the mugger yanking his father's wallet and his mother's purses from their bodies. He'll never forget the face of the man who killed his parents without so much as a second thought, just as he'll never forget sobbing over their charred remains as the sky broke open and washed his mother's blood from the pavement.

He studies the outline of Korra's face in the darkness and wonders who she dreamed about.

Mako remembers dreaming about the killer's face every night after their death. He had nightmares, but he never woke screaming like Bolin did, screaming for their mother and their father and the life they once knew. He woke sweating, frantically searching for his brother's form, covered with a raggedy blanket, snoring louder than the satomobiles on the streets above the bridge they were sleeping under. He woke filled with the fury and hatred that he managed to stamp down during the day and in the darkness, he embraced it.

Mako remembers being thirteen and wandering the city at night, after he made sure Bolin was asleep and well protected. He remembers hanging around the muscle for the triads as they drank, asking too many questions every night for months until he finally got an answer that lead somewhere. He doesn't remember how he got there, but he remembers standing on the stoop outside a dingy apartment building, the fire inside of him burning so hot that he feared he would burst into flame. With shaky hands he had entered the building, in the dead of night, no one around to see him go in. He remembers knocking on the door to apartment number three and the sound the hinges made when it was yanked open. He remembers staring into the half asleep face of the man who murdered his parents and watching the man's expression turn from confusion to fear. Mako had stepped over the threshold of the apartment and shut the door behind him without saying a word.

There were no words that could encompass the rage that had swallowed him whole or the hollowness he had felt for the five years since his parents had been cut down. No words were large enough to fill the gap that his parents had left in his heart, so he didn't say anything as he let the fire in his hands grow. There was no fight. There was no mercy.

He remembers burning the man until there was almost nothing left to burn, and turning on his heel to leave the building, never looking back. He remembers the cold air hitting him as he stepped outside, and all the fire going out of him. Was it freedom, or another burden he would carry for the rest of his life?

"Mako?" Korra asks again, "Did you fall asleep on me?"

"Sorry," he mumbles, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, "Got a little lost in my thoughts, I guess."

"It's fine," she says, snuggling in closer, "And you don't have to have an answer if you don't want to."

For a moment, Mako considers telling her everything, because he knows that she'll forgive him. But the moment passes, and he thinks better of it. He'll tell her in the morning so that it doesn't ruin her sleep.

"It was just a dream, anyways," she says, "I'd never let anyone get within a mile of hurting you."

"Of course you wouldn't," he says, and feels a slight smile creep onto his face in the darkness.

He had been turned to ash by the flames that claimed his parents, but it had been in his own fire that he was reborn of flesh and blood. There are still parts missing, holes that will never be filled, but he's got a beating heart, people who love him, and someone to hold him as he falls asleep, and that, Mako reflects, is all he needs.

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A MAKORRA FIC A MAKORRA FIC I WROTE A MAKORRA FIC MY OTP I MISSED THEM SO MUCH IT'S BEEN A YEAR SINCE I'VE WRITTEN THEM I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S BEEN A YEAR!

anyways this started out as me getting sidetracked from the next chapter of 'The Other Side' and ended with me stressing over a title, and I'm still not happy with the title so if you think of something better, please let me know. I hope you enjoyed this! Reviews are always appreciated!


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